


Papaya Whip Nail Polish

by magicalgirlmania



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Keith/Lance (Voltron) Angst, Langst, Mild Language, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-10 12:05:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10437393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicalgirlmania/pseuds/magicalgirlmania
Summary: Nail polish (also known as nail varnish) is a lacquer that can be applied to the human fingernails or toenails to decorate and protect the nail plates. The formulation has been revised repeatedly to enhance its decorative effects and to suppress cracking or flaking. Nail polish consists of a mix of an organic polymer and several other components, depending on the brand.AU where everything is the same but Lance McClain knows how to make nail polish and he gets everyone to wear some.





	1. Nitrocellulose, Butyl Acetate, Dibutylphthalate

**Author's Note:**

> Note: The names Lance uses to describe the different colors of nail polish he creates are actual names I found for real nail polish brands. If you would like to know the specific brand or number for the polish, just ask, but know as a reference that I used OPI for most of them.

It was a homemade recipe: nitrocellulose, dissolved in butyl acetate or ethyl acetate, with plastic dibutylphthalate and camphor, and dyes like chromium oxide greens, chromium hydroxide, ferric ferrocyanide, stannic oxide, titanium dioxide, iron oxide, carmine, ultramarine, and manganese violet. It could be be glittery if you added mica, bismuth oxychloride, natural pearls, or aluminum powder; it could be thick if you added stearalkonium hectorite or acetone. You could put it on your toes and on your fingers, but never on your skin. It came in a spectrum of colors from clear to hot red, but it was always named after a fruit. It was a lethal dosage of good looks and Lance knew it by heart.

When he had first shown the princess the recipe, it was by accident.

It was so late into the artificial night, that even the castle, who always deceived and defrauded the darkness, seemed awake. There had a been a strange noise that ricocheted off the steel walls, like a stifled shout, like someone was cursing. Allura could catch the pitch of the voice in her sleep, that it was so loud that it was comparable to a light being turned on in a dark, empty room. The worst symptom of her insomnia, that agitated her restless senses at great lengths, was the odor of it all. It was slight but it was pungent, as if alcohol could be barbed. The doors and the walls did nothing to abate it's waft, and neither the sheets nor the pillow cases could shield her from it's bite. After three hours of caustic and incessant torture, Allura, practically driven mad by the odor, chased it down the hallway like a dog on the hunt, a pillow cocked in her arms. When she followed it's growing stench all the way down to the kitchen, eyes wide and red from restlessness, she found Lance, face charred with an expression of intense engrossment in five different boiling and bubbling soups of toxic aromas and disgusting palates, one of the five having blown up in his eyes the moment he looked up from the stove. After almost choking him to death with her expensively feathered pillow, Allura was revealed the fascinating beauty of nail polish.

On the second occasion, it was a date. (It really wasn't, but Lance had convinced himself it was.)

They met in the kitchen, twenty minutes after they were sure everyone had gone to bed, with the lights out and the safety walkways on. When the castle had convinced everyone it was twilight, the corridors would lightly glow with the luminescence of the safety lights, to guide its residents from their rooms and back if necessary; it gave the place a sort of ambience about it, an air of mystery, making the two's escapade a little more enticing, maybe even romantic (if Allura didn't choke him again). Because, as they had last discovered, Allura's sense of smell was so strong, she had to wear a makeshift surgical mask; a small price to pay for the added benefit of beauty. Lance prepared all the pots and fetched all the ingredients, and Allura set the stove at the right temperature and helped Lance retrieve an item too high when needed, to his humiliation.

"The key," Lance told her with a smirk, "is that you mix it 'till it's thick."

Allura leaned over the counter, peeking at the pots.

"The smell is actually a really good way of telling if you're done," he continued, tapping his wooden spoon on the edge of the steel pot. "But if you want to keep some for yourself, I can add a little perfume later on to cancel out the alcohol."

"I'm rather surprised by your extensive knowledge of this... process," Allura said, a small smile on her lips, an eyebrow piqued.

Lance wiped his palms on his apron and, using two mismatched potholders, picked up the steel pot and tipped its contents into a taller, more stout one. They watched as it sizzled, the placid solvent causing the burning elixir to simmer and bubble in reaction to the cold. Lance grinned through the steam, feeling that she was impressed by him.

"Hun, when you've got as many sisters I had growing up, you'll do anything to keep their dirty hands off of your face."

Allura laughed at this, and Lance's pride began to swell. He slid into the countertop chair across from her.

"And how long did it take for you to master your art?"

Lance tugged at his hair. "Eh, I'd say about a month, maybe two? Man, it was such a long time ago." He leaned back in his seat a bit, feeling more relaxed. Whatever desire for romanticism he had felt began to slip away, like steam from a kettle. "The girls kept bringing back books from the library about makeup and stuff, we used to flip through them every night after our mom had put us to bed."

And as they began to pass the time with Lance's childhood stories, they giggled and laughed and they joked, to the verge that there were tears building in Allura's eyes, and there were no longer whispers but rather weakly suppressed snickers at the idea of Lance, ten years old, pushing his baby sisters through a Wal-Mart parking lot in a shopping cart at 3 A.M. in the morning and pushing them down the sidewalk into the road at maximum miles per hour, screaming at the top of their lungs. When they had gotten through all of the details of the whole ordeal, there was a loud and noticeable cough from the doorway, and the two spun around, eyes wide, like thieves caught red handed.

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Quiznak," Lance cursed under his breath.

"Pidge?" Allura grinned. "Pidge is that you?"

"Shhh!" He hissed.

"What the heck are you guys doing, you're gonna wake up the entire ship if you don't keep it down!" Pidge half-shouted, half-whispered. It was then that they both realized she had her bayard aimed at the counter, but she quickly it stuffed in the back pocket of her shorts.

"We're doing our nails, you want in?" Lance replied, hoping that she would say yes, and save them all from the sting of embarrassment that would rise in their throats when they saw each other in the light of day tomorrow morning.

There was a tense pause, and then

"What shade of green do you guys have?"

Allura was the first one up the next morning. She was in a rather good mood; she hummed as she walked down the corridors to the deck of the ship, a giggle barely touching her lips every time she glanced at her perfectly coated nails. As the rest of the Paladins filtered in, one after the other, Pidge being the last, Shiro gazed over his crewmates with a look of great satisfaction and pride in his team- until something caught his eye. As Allura tapped on her monitor, and Lance glided through his radars, and Pidge muzzled a large yawn, one thing became glaringly obvious: their nails. And it wasn't just Shiro who noticed.

"Is that - is that nail polish?" Keith asked, slowly, pointing at Lance's hands. His expression of both disturbance and pure confusion filled Lance with great delight, who sneered at his slack jaw.

Allura was wearing Polly Want A Lacquer? lavender, Pidge a makeshift shade of Is That A Spear In Your Pocket? teal, and Lance with a real solid blue of Super Trop-i-cal-i-fiji-istic. He was thinking of getting a space trademark for those names.

"Wait, really?" Hunk swung around in his chair, leaning on his knee to catch a glimpse.

"You're kidding," Shiro simpered, a smile softly tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Oh my gosh," Hunk gawked at Pidge's outstretched fingertips, "that's actual nail polish!" He rubbed his thumb against her nail, at which she scowled but did not protest. "It's real!" He squeaked.

"I don't even want to ask," Keith spat, shaking his head in a stupor of shock.

"Aren't they just gorgeous?" Allura exclaimed, to no one particular.

Shiro laughed, audibly, for the first real time in a long time. He took her hand, examined them, and continued to laugh again, smiling as he said to her "This is a lovely shade for you princess, it suits you so well." Keith looked like he wanted to puke.

"I should be thanking Lance of course," she replied. "Did you know that he's a chemist?"

"You failed science by 2 letter grades!" Hunk exclaimed.

"Hey, I got an A in chemistry, thank you very much!" Lance shot back.

Hunk paused for a moment, scratching his head. "Actually - actually yeah, that's true... Why is that, again?"

"I bet you cheated," Pidge jeered.

"It was because I was good in the class, for your information!" Lance crossed his arms with a pout.

"If there's one thing you aren't good at, it's pulling off that shade of blue," Keith snorted, slumped in his chair.

"Oh yeah?" Lance stood up, fists clenched. "It's better than a) that mullet and b) that shade of puce you wear every single day! Doesn't it get old, being ugly?"

"What the hell is puce!" Keith shouted back, less of a question and more of an insult.

"Alright, hold it, hold it!" Coran finally said, hands outstretched as if to keep the two distanced from each other. Everyone on the deck became silent. "What exactly is this 'nail polish' you speak of?"

"It's basically a lacquer for your nails," Pidge explained, showcasing her own.

"What purpose does it serve to you humans?" Coran asked, twisting the edge of his beard as he peered at Allura's, skeptical of the product.

"It can be used for protecting the actual nail plates, or-"

"-Or, for fashion!" Lance cut in, enthusiastically.

"Or that," Pidge added.

"It's for girls Coran-"

"Hey!" Lance shouted.

"-it's just a cheap marketing tactic to get moms to buy more makeup for their little kids," Keith opined, leaning against the arm of his chair, with an indifferent stare.

"That's not true," Shiro said, trying to hold in a laugh. He was biting his lower lip to stifle the clear amusement on his face. "Keith used to ask me to do his nails all the time when he saw his classmates wearing it."

"Shuddup!" Keith yelled, digging his nails into the arms of the chair, as if to hide them. "I swear Shiro, if you-"

"His favorite color was red."

Keith walked straight out the door, without a word. No one stopped laughing to look. Lance was howling at the gratification that came with second-hand embarrassment, and Pidge had to wipe away a tear from her eye; Shiro's gut physically hurt with the hilarity of it all. Even Allura was chuckling, her cheeks a light shade of pink.

"Is he going to be OK?" Hunk asked, a little bit concerned.

"He'll be fine dude!" Lance was grinning devilishly, as if these new revelations had implanted a horrible idea in his head. "Keith's a macho big boy, he can handle it," and he dismissed Hunk's insistence with a wave of his polished nails.


	2. Voltron Is My Favorite Color

Shiro was next. He waited in his cot for five knocks at the door in the dead of the night- one for each nail on your right hand. It was now their signal, to inform you that it was your turn to have your nails professionally and formally done by Lance McClain. He threw his feet over the edge of the bed and opened the door to Allura, who put a finger over her smiling lips to caution him to be quiet. He nodded, and they tiptoed down the corridor by the light of the safety walkways to the kitchen; as they approached, the scent of alcohol and poignant chemicals became more noticeable to his nose, and less inviting with each step.

Lance was hiding beneath the counter, and when the door slid open, all that was visible in the dark was the electric blue glow of the stove and the steel pot that sat on it's burner.

"Where is he?" Shiro whispered.

"You should probably stand back," Allura whispered back.

Lance vaulted from the floor- but Shiro had his bayard pointed at the center of his forehead.

"Why does everybody do that?" Lance hissed, struggling to edge away from it's tip. "Every single time!"

"Sorry Lance!"

"I hope you know that you're not very scary," Allura whispered, leaning on the countertop.

"Yeah, yeah," Lance waved his free hand at her, going back to stirring the solution.

Allura and Lance both agreed that whatever shade Shiro wanted, it most definitely had to match his deadly robotic Galran arm. That way, if he ever came face to face with another plain-looking Galra in hand to hand combat, he would be stylishly prepared- he may not have the most up-to-date prosthetic tech, but he would be the most fashionably superior, dammit! This prerequisite left them with a very limited color scheme of greys and blacks, of which Lance thought all were distasteful. Shiro insisted that he did not have any initial preferences, but that was a polite lie, and all knew it.

"I am not allowing the head of Voltron to wear such a disgusting shade of black," Lance said. "Just thinking about it gives me shivers!" He gagged at the thought.

"Lance is right!" Allura nodded in affirmation. "What if instead of just one color, we used multiple?"

Lance almost dropped his spoon into the spot.

"Allura, darling, you're a genius," Lance exclaimed. He was trying to keep his voice low, but was failing miserably; he was never the quiet one in a group.

Shiro was beginning to feel apprehension rise in him about the idea of wearing nail polish. His knee-jerk reaction was to stay silent as Allura talked him through it all, but as Lance began to shake the finished concoction to fully mix the ingredients, he became suddenly nauseous. That, or it could have been the scent.

"Hold still Shiro!" Allura cautioned, keeping his left arm steady with her right hand.

They watched intently as Lance applied the polish to his nails. He was carefully switching between yellow and blue, then green and red, and finally a glossy coating of grey, carrying the brush over his hand to avoid any spilling or mixing of the colors.

"Woah! It's not too bad of a job, right?" Shiro said, showing them to Allura.

"Hey, be careful! They still need to dry!"

"What colors are these?" Allura asked.

Lance tapped a finger on the counter, thinking. "I've gone through a couple of names so far, but I think I've got a good one for the grey: I Can Never Hut Up." She snickered at this.

As they let the polish dry, they began to run through the list of names, striking out the ones that were the most bland and laughing at the ones that were the most noteworthy. There was Exotic Birds Do Not Tweet and the classic Do You Sea What I Sea? or the I'm Soooo Swamped! line. Lance's personal favorite was the punchy shade of red, which he dubbed Living On The Bula-Vard!, an island catchphrase his mother used to throw at them when they moved into their first house. The tiled roof, which had been so common on the colonial coastline, was a bright shade of red instead of the common and calm blue hues their neighbors loved so much- but the differentiation his mother had so adored.

They attempted his right hand once Shiro's left had dried- the results appearing fruitless, to their disappointment. The colors dribbled down his iron fingertips and onto the counter, where they spilled into each other and stained the counter an ugly tint of brown.

"Now that's what I call puce," Lance said with a scowl, poking at the puddle with a napkin.

"Sorry, I probably should have warned you guys." Shiro averted his eyes as Allura leaned over and scrubbed the residual polish off his robotic arm. "Hunk once tried to sign my arm with a permanent marker and it did the same thing."

"Y'know, I've always wanted to sign that thing of yours," Lance said, nodding in its directions as he poured the remaining solution into individual bottles. "Do you think we could put stickers on it, like the kind you would put on the bumper of your car?" Shiro laughed at the idea.

"What's a car?" Allura asked, looking up at Shiro with scrunched eyebrows, and they laughed more. "You Earthens and your strange references. I don't understand what's so funny."

And she would not find it any more funny in the morning than she did at night.

"That's what you used for transportation?" Allura asked, almost mockingly, even a bit snobby, pointing at the projection of the vehicle. "It's so... chunky!"

"Chunky?" Shiro repeated, offended. "I loved this car, this was the first car I ever drove!"

"What's that large open container attached to the back of it?" She circled her finger around the back end of the truck.

"That's the trunk!" Shiro exclaimed, exasperated, but also disturbingly amused.

"What is it for?" She grimaced at it, her disgust obnoxiously clear to everyone who overheard her.

"You put stuff in it! For example, if I was annoyed with you, I would throw you in the back of it- like right now," and he made a deliberate (and pathetic) effort to scare her, to seize her arm and pull her towards him, over the deck monitor, growling like a monster who couldn't hold in a laugh. She laughed too, leaning into his grip.

Lance and Keith were both shaking their heads.

"What a Texan," they gibed in unison.

Pidge yawned, walking onto the deck late, per usual. "They flirting again?"

"Yup," Hunk nodded, taking a sip from his mug. "Sooner or later Coran's going to catch on, and when he does, oh boy." He shuddered visibly. "Shiro's charm isn't going to keep him out of trouble for long."

"Maybe those nails will," Pidge scoffed, grinning. "Nice color scheme."

"Oh my gosh," Hunk almost choked on his coffee. "It matches our lions. I'm done. I'm forgetting I ever saw that." He took another sip and walked off, fighting the snort that he almost let loose.

"How much you wanna bet I can get Coran to get his nails done too?" Lance's smirk was taunting, almost flirtatious, and directed point-blank at Keith.

"Five bucks you can't," Pidge cut in.

"Make it double and I'll get Hunk too."

"You're on."

Keith's face was the same shade as Living On The Bula-Vard!.


	3. Pink Matches Your Mustache, Coran

Coran, a sharp and clean-cut man, would hold the tiny glass vial up to his mustache and compare the color, and Lance would either shake his head in disfavor or nod with verbal flattery. He was a man of many colors, of many flavors and desires, and he wanted his nails to reflect the multifarious facets of his mind and his brawn.

"Coran, my man," Lance said, lowering the bottle from his face, "maybe we should focus more on you and less on your mustache."

"But it's the physical representation of everything that is so wonderful about me. It's symbolic," Coran said, stroking the hairs with a satisfied smile. "Symbolic of a real man."

"You don't have to have a mustache to be a man. There are lots of great things about you that make you a man." Lance poked through the spectrum of solution colors, then turned to Hunk at the stove and said "Hey Hunk, can you add some manganese violet to that next batch?"

"You got it," Hunk called back.

"I say we go with pink Coran," Lance said. He was leaning on the counter nonchalantly, a pen poised in his left hand. He wanted to insure that his recipe was optimized for maximum color shine and durable product quality, and the most presentable way to achieve this was to physically record his original, all-organic instructions. "There's a lot of symbolism in pink."

Coran's eyes widened in excitement. "You've got a good eye for color, m'boy!" And he reached over the counter and ruffled Lance's hair heartily, with the affection and approval of a respected elder. Lance laughed a little at this, but the smile on his face said it all. "You must've been a painter in your past life, hm?"

"Me? Nah, but I guess it's fun to doodle. Y'know, back on Earth, nail art was a really popular trend. You could pay someone to draw on your nails, or write stuff on them if you wanted."

"Lance?" Coran was beaming.

"Yeah?"

"Could you do that.. For me?"

Lance laughed. "Yeah sure, what do you want me to add?"

The last time Lance remembered ever writing in cursive was in grade school. He had loved to scribble stories in the margins of his notebook paper during lessons and assignments, but the grueling method with which his teachers had enforced upon him to memorize- not learn -a dead art nearly cost him his hand. He would come home, hands trembling from a broken capacity to write; on the dirt path back, he would stoop down on his knees at the side of road when no one was looking, and stick his blistered fingers in the water of their community retention pond for relief. As he etched a 'C' into Coran's thumb, the memories came back to him slowly, like the ripples moving outwards in the pond when he dipped his fingers in.

Coran was ecstatic with the final results . His right hand spelled out "G-R-E-A-T", and his left finished the sentence with "C-O-R-A-N"; in a capitalized, curly-cue font, Polly Want A Lacquer? lavender stamped legibly over Two-Timing The Zones pink.

"Me next, me next!" Hunk exclaimed, while Coran admired his newly coated nails in awe.

"Did you finish the orange one yet?" Lance asked, wiping his palms on the fabric of his apron with an accomplished grin.

"Gosh, no, I kind of forgot the third step," Hunk rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, still in an oven mitt. "The whole process is still new to me."

"That's OK, you'll get the hang of it. After all, you are our resident chef. Let's take a look," and Coran and Hunk watched as Lance, who paused for a moment, mentally running through his steps, analyzed the setup of the pot and it's concoction and began to experiment with the dials on the stove, the mixing of the pigments, the combination of plasticizers and catalysts- in a matter of sixty seconds. "There!"

He turned to face the two of them, who were impressed by Lance's finesse with the science of it, the savviness with the vials and the chemicals that he demonstrated so subtly, as if chemistry was an art in it's own right.

"You had the ingredients right, but the temperature was a bit off, so I thought I would just top it off for you." Lance clasped a proud hand on Hunk's shoulder. "That was some good work you had going though, especially for your first time." Hunk gave a small, admirable smile, maintaining humility in light of his flattery.

As they waited for the solution to simmer, the three of them discussed the flaws and merits of Lance's recipe: was the nitrocellulose cotton that he had been using too viscous or not viscous enough? Or the pigments, did they think the ones currently in use reacted well or poorly to the solvent agent? Was guanine preferred over mica, or mica over guanine, based on the substance quality? Lance quickly noted any key debates that arose over a step or ingredient usage in the margins of his recipe, and as either Hunk called out an unstable combination of compounds or Coran mentioned a primary innovation in the transfusion of liquids, he was keen to record the commentary. The exchange of analysis was enthralling, even the development of alterations was interesting as they started tangents on certain elements of the production. Even as Lance began to paint Hunk's nails with the orange paint, the conversation continued, unabated.

"Man, you would've really liked the FDA Coran," Hunk laughed, and Lance almost snorted.

"Ah, yes, the Food and Drug Administration. I was the head of that agency back on Altea, when I was still young and leaping through the ranks of the bureaucracy," Coran reminisced. "I'm surprised you Earthens were smart of enough to have one! I'll admit, I might have underestimated your aptitude."

Hunk and Lance shared an exchange of looks, one of both bafflement and entertainment.

"What's next, Altean Common Core?" Lance whispered to Hunk, who had to choke down the laugh.

"Still better than the public school system," Hunk added, slightly shaking from the amount of self-control it took for him to suppress the obvious hilarity he found in Coran's innocence.

"The royal Altean education," Coran began, fussing with the collar of his jacket in a prim manner, "compromised not only your logical and mathematical pursuits, but of the most important and highly-regarded sciences of the government."

"Oooh, what was gym like?" Hunk asked, and Lance gagged.

"You mean, 'physical education'?" Hunk nodded. "Well, of course it focused on the vast amount of traditional and native martial arts our civilization was known for, with a great stress on military and combat strategy ranging all sorts of styles and landscapes."

"Well heck," Lance huffed, "if that was the kind of P.E. class they provided at the Garrison, maybe I wouldn't have been considered a soon-to-be dropout by most of you guys."

He would be corrected sooner than he thought.


	4. Language

"So you owe me ten bucks."

"Lance, you know damn well I don't have ten bucks." Pidge rolled her eyes.

"I mean, you owe him something." Hunk shrugged, wrench in hand. "You did say it was a deal, Pidge."

"Oral contracts aren't worth the paper they're written on," she retorted, without the slightest delay. She was engrossed in her machinery, fiddling with all the nuts and bolts that always lay scattered around the room in the form of rusted android joints and half-baked computer parts, wires still dangling from their anatomy like an open wound.

"I'm not asking for much here Pidge!" Lance exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air with exasperation. Just noticing the mound of a metal mess that only an engineer could ever accomplish gave Lance anxiety.

The moment she looked up from her hardware circuit he immediately regretted his choice of words. Katie Holt's glare was enough to cut through steel bars with a sting. Lance picked at the collar of his jacket, waiting for her to strike, but instead she just shrugged at him.

"Well you're going to have to wait," she said, "because I have more important things to handle at the moment than babysitting you."

"Alright, now that was just harsh," Hunk replied with a shudder.

Lance waved his distress away with a flick of his hand, taking a seat across from Pidge on the hard floor. For a few minutes, a silence settled between them, the murmur of iron tools working on iron units the only exchange of noise that occurred in the room. Halfway through a circuit Hunk would glance over his shoulder at the two of them, as if the moment he turned his back the tension would be released through a sudden fit of force. Ultimately, it was a battle of psychology, a test of mental fortitude, an indicator of the strength and sturdiness of your pride. Finally:

"What do you want Lance?" Pidge began to bend. Her voice was clipped, irritation the most apparent, but an underlying understanding of a game; a slightly piqued desire to see what move Lance was about to make next.

Hunk let out a sigh, a discharge of the unease that was laid to rest.

Lance was grinning, a genial animosity declaring itself present as he dramatically reached into his back pocket and pulled out a rough sketch of a machine, with LED lights for teeth and a squarish frame for it's mouth. Pidge snickered, as she began to draw in the object's physique and conclude-

"It's a drying machine for nails."

Hunk threw his head back and groaned to no one but the ceiling.

"It's a gift," Lance said, pointing at the sketch, "for Keith."

"Oh, he's gonna love it. I'll make sure of it."

"PALADINS! PLEASE MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE TRAINING DECK FOR TODAY'S FITNESS SESSION!" Coran's disembodied voice called out over the intercom system. It was the only update he ever preferred to relay to his guests, other than "INTRUDER!"; the ship was a popular choice for outer space stowaways, especially the cynically-intentioned ones, to the neighbors' agitation.

It was a sparring session that day, courtesy of Shiro. He greeted the entire crew on the drill floor, decked out in full uniform, like the rest of them. The princess and Coran followed their movements from above on the observatory deck; Allura waved from behind the glass panes as the paladins filed in, smiling directly at Shiro. None of them were amused by this. There was an offhand attitude from all of them that hour, one of fatigue, coupled by the languid want to do nothing for the rest of the day.

"All we've done is spar for the past three days," Hunk complained, out of earshot from Shiro. "I'm starting to get sore guys."

Pidge groaned. "I'm going to need two doses of Ibuprofen after this."

"Aren't we all?" Lance said, scowling.

It was a false statement.

Keith may have been asleep two minutes ago, but he was out for two things: blood and a fight. There was a rage that lurked at the root of his being, and it's constant irritation by the incessant stimuli around him, particularly Lance, only inflamed it's symptoms. Needless to say, Keith was indescribably disconcerted, so much so that he could not face his companions. His outward demeanor was exhaustion: bags under his eyes, disheveled hair, an indifference to his required presence. Beneath it all, a latent urgency for sleep; but also a hunger for savagery. He was angry, yet he didn't know why.

"Alright everyone, you know the drill. We'll start out at beginning level and Coran will start to raise the difficulty level the longer we're down here." Shiro cracked his knuckles, more prepared than any of them for a real, actual fight. "Remember, the goal is to protect your teammates, not yourself." He glanced over at Keith and Lance, a solid two feet between them.

He gave the signal to Allura to begin the simulation; in turn, she fired up the generator.

"Good luck," Shiro said, and he activated his visor. They followed suit.

"Yeah Lance," Keith sneered, "you're gonna need it."

"You better watch out for these hands Keith," Lance shot back, displaying his bayard with a dramatic flourish, his blue nail polish unmistakably pronounced. He smirked as his gun emerged from its carrier, and as their targets began to boot up, processing the visual data in front of them, he winked at Keith, unapologetically.

Keith snarled as he adjusted the position of his blade, barely able to suppress the great desire to decapitate Lance.

"3!"

"Psst, Pidge!"

"2!"

"What?"

"1!"

"Watch this!"

"ALL SYSTEMS ARE A GO!" Allura shouted into their headphones.

Hunk was the first one out. He avoided maybe two, three shots, before jumping headfirst into a blast aimed in his general direction. As the floor opened up underneath him, he gave Shiro a diffident smile.

"I'll see you guys la-!" And then he was swallowed whole.

"What!" Pidge exclaimed, eyes wide.

"LEVEL TWO IS A GO!" Coran announced overhead.

"Is that even allowed Shiro?" She shouted over the gunshots.

"I think you can answer that for yourself Pidge!" He shouted right back, as one of the fighter bots took aim at the back of his head. Without even a glance over his shoulder, he dove to the ground, rolled to his feet, and ducked behind his shield, blocking the blast.

"You know what Shiro," Pidge shouted back, her brow furrowed. She disabled her shield. "I think you're right." And she charged, green bayard cocked in hand, the nearest fighter bot. It was a direct hit to the chest. Without any last words, she leapt into the floor and receded from sight.

Seconds later, she and Hunk reappeared on the observatory deck, laughing sneakily behind their hands; Allura responded with a disapproving glare, and the laughter quickly became a repressed cough.

Shiro pressed a finger to his headset: "Coran, skip a few levels."

"ON IT!"

"You still there Keith!" Lance yelled, the edge in his voice revealing an animated furor that pulsed through his entire body. His finger was locked firm on the trigger; his feet were solid, the connection between his soles and his spine never broken, not for one split second. Every muscle was stable, but his blood was trembling with the thrill of not just seeing, but feeling the ammunition rush from the tip of his gun, like electricity was flowing from his finger through the barrel and into the air, to who knows where. The excitement was all in seeing where the flow would end.

"Yeah," Keith answered, gritting his teeth. The fighter bot on his tail was making an effort to push him back into Lance, but he wouldn't let it. He shifted his feet, and braced for impact. "Haven't broken a nail yet Lance?"

"Coran," Shiro said into his headset. He pronounced each syllable slowly, fiercely; as if to restrain the faint trace of a bark in his voice from running wild: "Give me level fifty."

Coran looked up from his monitor, gaping at Allura. "He wants to see level fifty!"

"Level fifty?" Allura reiterated, not sure that she heard him correctly.

"That's uh, that's a pretty big number Coran," Hunk said. "Are you sure Shiro said fifty? And not, I don't know, ten? Fifteen maybe?"

Pidge hurried to the window, followed by Hunk, his face contorted with anxiety. She turned to face the princess, but she was watching the three paladins intensely as Shiro fended off the three fighter bots alone, with one shield- Keith and Lance in a screaming match behind him.

"Do it," Allura commanded.

"Yes princess!" Coran then turned to speak into his headset- "LEVEL FIFTY HAS BEEN APPROVED."

"Oh, I'll do more than break a nail Keith!" Lance shouted, his voice barely audible in the crossfires of the match. "I'll break your pretty little neck off!"

"Try it asshole!" He was smirking, a jeer on his lips. "While you were painting your nails, I was studying the blade!"

"You're an actual fucking joke!" The laugh that came from Lance was empty, premeditated, and it lacked a shred of humanity.

Shiro couldn't handle it anymore. He turned on his heel, scowling at the both of them; the grind of his jaw revealing his bare teeth as he shouted at them "Language!" And in that moment, Keith saw, for the first time, the white of Shiro's eyes. The fury stitched into every hair in his crumpled brow, the circles in his eyes rough and strained from stress. But it was too late.

Lance didn't pause to aim, the moment his eyes centered on the fight bot's head he pulled the trigger. Keith ducked to the floor, and as it collapsed under Shiro's feet, he lunged for the fabric on his ankle. He was out of reach before Keith could comprehend that Shiro was gone. It was a gutshot straight to the chest.

By the time Shiro got to the observatory deck, he was panting- not from tire, but from rage.

"Coran," he reached out his open palm, "give me the speaker."

The fighter bot that had shot Shiro was missing it's head. Lance was about to lose his too.

"KEITH."

They both turned their heads, startled, towards the observatory deck above them. The expression sternly etched onto Shiro's face said it all, and it burned it's impression into the stainless glass window panes.

"IF YOU LOSE TO LANCE YOU HAVE TO GET YOUR NAILS DONE."

"I can't believe he just said that with a straight face," Pidge snorted.

"Look at his face!" Hunk exclaimed. "That's the look of a murderer." He turned to Shiro, frantically exclaiming "Lance is going to be killed. By Keith. Keith! Of all people!" He was running his fingers fretfully through his hair. "What are we going to put on the epitaph!"

"Lucky Lance, maybe?" Pidge said.

And when Keith turned around, Lance had no time to collect a memoir of his regrets; he turned around swinging. The look in his eyes was primal, like an animal; his sword became an extension of his body, like a claw is to a lion. The nobility that dictated the sword was lost to him, it became a totally different weapon in his hands. It was fast: it chased the hairs on the back of his neck, it followed the movement of the eyes from one corner to the next, as Lance aimed and fired and aimed and fired without a single lucky shot.

Keith abandoned his shield. He darted past the cloud of gunshots- coming from Lance or the fighter bots, he couldn't tell you which. He brought the blade across his body, sidestepped to Lance's left, and with the support of his land, brought the sword down on Lance's legs. He never made contact. Lance had swung his left leg in a round kick, his foot hooking around the nearest fighter bot's neck, and brought it down on Keith's back. His spine gave in and he collapsed under the weight of the steel skeleton. There was a blur of a moment, a split second where Keith was down, defenseless, and there was nothing but gun fire and the sound of electrical cords splitting at their ends to fill the distance between them.

The instant Keith's foot hit the ground, Lance was already pulling the trigger. He dropped to the floor, aiming to catch his feet- but Keith had already darted too far to the right. Lance was struggling to keep up, straining his eyes to find even a small tag, an indicator of Keith's presence.

The shell of the short circuited fighter bot was propelled into the air- intended for Lance -and it flew overhead and slammed into its counterpart, effectively shielding Keith from the secondary gunfire. That was more than an indication.

Lance glanced over his shoulder at the pile of twitching robots, forcing a smile, to keep up with his bluff. "Someone's mad."

"Paint this!" And Keith slammed his sword into the floor, centimeters away from Lance's face.

"Did you pick out your colors already?" Lance was on his back now, and he was aiming for the ceiling. "I've heard that you really like red."

"The only red I'd like to see is the red spilling from your damn mouth!" Keith pivoted his heel and his foot went for Lance's gun, but he hesitated. Lance had already pulled the trigger, and he had shot the ceiling.

"LANGUAGE KEITH!"

"So you like lipstick too?" Lance was laughing, but it was an inane pitch; the noise a mad man makes when he realizes death is inevitable. "Ooh, how sensual!" He continued to shoot at the ceiling, staring straight ahead at Keith. He couldn't look away, even if he wanted to; his stare was boring into his forehead.

Keith didn't look up; he didn't need too. He knew that there was a speaker on the ceiling in that exact same spot, the same spot Lance was shooting at- not from initial evaluation or distant memory, but from the sound. The screech of ammunition from Lance's gun was earsplitting, but Shiro's voice on the intercom system had been coming from an easily located source- above his head. It would take one more blast, and the speaker would be six seconds away from colliding with Keith's nasty mullet. He tore his eyes from Lance's face and saw, on the edges of his periphery, the movement of brown flesh over a blue trigger.

And as he saw Lance's finger pull on the trigger, Keith charged him, his sword fixed and unfaltering in his grip. But Lance did something unexpected. He chucked his gun at Keith. And he dove for his legs. It all happened in approximately six seconds.

The speaker plunged into the floor, and debris splintered off, flying everywhere. It never caught it's calculated target. Keith dropped his sword, his fingers slipping one by one from its hilt, and it skid across the floor- in it's place, he caught Lance's gun, which immediately reverted into his blue bayard. He lurched backwards at the force of it, slipping on his heels as he lost his balance. Lance hurtled himself into Keith, yelling "¡Coma mierda, mójol feo!".

Pidge snatched the headset from Shiro's hands.

"WATCH YOUR FUCKING LANGUAGE LANCE."

But it wasn't over yet, they weren't finished. His back to the speaker, Keith slid to the floor, chin tucked into his chest. Lance's body was forced to drop with him. It was all happening too fast for his head to process, he was running on reflexes by now- reflexes he didn't know he had. Keith's foot was digging into his stomach then, jabbing his flesh like an ice pick, despite the burn it left in his throat. He was going to kick him off, he was going to go flying. But Lance had other plans.

As his right hand clutched the edges of the blue bayard, barely suspended out of reach of his grasp, he brought his left hand down on Keith's face, beating his palm into his picture-perfect features with all the momentum his arm could generate. A sickening scream escaped his throat. And just as quickly as Keith's head had snapped back from the brunt of the blow, Lance was gliding across the floor at the push of a heel.

Keith was paralyzed, blinded by the searing pain that didn't just begin at his nose but ended at the bottom of his spine. The last thing he saw was blue nail polish sinking into his skin with the serrated prick of a caliber bullet.

Lance had to swallow a groan, and in doing so he choked on what he assumed was internal blood. "Hey, Keith," he panted. His breath was short, with the steadiness of his voice trimmed at the edges by the physical toll it took for using it; but he was too prideful not too. "So I've been thinking - thinking lately, about what color would look great on your nails. Y'know really - really bring out the color of your eyes." He sounded delirious.

"D' yo' eve'er shuddup!" Keith was slurring. He had to bite down on his tongue to hold back the scream crawling up his throat. "Yo' stupi' pretty boy!"

Lance cocked his bayard, and his gun materialized in his hands. He didn't have a need for aim. His hands were working automatically, his entire body was on autopilot- but his mind was racing, identifying every word Keith had said: Stupid pretty boy.

"I've come to a conclusion," Lance said, his finger hovering over the trigger. He could feel the heat of his pulse on his fingertips, but he knew the moment his flesh pressed the trigger it would be ice cold.

Keith forced his eyes closed; there was nothing he could see through the pain. It was bitter, numb, and it washed over him like defeat.

"Papaya Whip."

And Lance pulled the trigger. His fingers would be cold for the rest of the day.


	5. Oh Brother, Like a Brother

Coran had to set Keith's nose in place with his bare hands.

Or so Hunk had told Lance. The two were sitting in the kitchen, one with bandages and one with hunger. The damage was far less urgent than they had predicted. Lance was walking out of the medbay after twenty-five minutes, no crutches or broken bones to suggest a serious fight had broken out earlier. In truth, everything would have seemed variably normal, until he was reminded by the soreness in his gut that yes, he had been flung six feet across a room. It was not an easy nor a pleasurable assurance to the mind. And for once, Lance had nothing to comment, nothing to show for his bravado; his head was tearing at his consciousness, but the thoughts and concepts that perturbed him so much left him so speechless. The three words that rang clear in the aftermath were three words he could not process, words that Lance had locked away for so many years that he couldn't fathom to reconcile with the reality of their spoken value.

"Shiro wants to have a talk with all of us," Hunk said.

"All of us?" Lance didn't look up from the counter. He was fidgeting a bit, picking at the threads of his jacket's sleeve.

"Well, not exactly no." Hunk looked physically uncomfortable in his situation. "He's going to speak with you and us, but he'll speak with Keith uh, on an individual basis, I guess?"

Lance did not respond.

"That was a real good fight you put up though. The kind of fight I literally had no idea was in you."

He met Lance's gaze and smiled, a little weak, maybe timid- but a smile nonetheless. Lance returned the sentiment.

"Well, well, if it isn't the underdog." Pidge was grinning, practically beaming, like a child who witnessed their favorite superhero win the day. "Congrats, Lance. Who's next, Sendak? Heck, why not even Zarkon?" As she pulled a seat up to the counter, she gave Lance a cheeky nudge in the arm. His wince left her apologetic. "Still a bit sore, huh? Take it easy, you've got nothing left to worry about in the gym department."

"Yeah, at least you don't have do an extra workout session with Shiro tomorrow." Hunk cringed at the thought.

Pidge puffed a sigh. "I swear, if he makes us spar again! My legs are going to literally fall out of their hip sockets."

"That doesn't sound any more comfortable!" Hunk exclaimed.

"Hey- that's a good excuse to skip out on sparring though. I'm not wrong, am I?" Pidge smirked at her own ingenious. When she was using that genius for other's benefits, it was considered clever; when she used it for her own self-benefit, it became sly.

"Well I guess you have a point there," He shrugged. "Hey, have you seen Shiro anywhere?"

"No, but if I was going to make a guess, I would say he's with Allura," Pidge said, scowling. She puckered her face in disgust. "Gosh, sooner or later they're going to be holding hands twenty-four-seven. In front of us! Can you imagine that?"

"At least they're not shooting each other in the head," Hunk contended, beneath his breath. Pidge snickered.

"I can hear you guys, believe it or not," Lance muttered.

"Oh wow, so the sulking hero can talk," Pidge laughed. "Mr. Moody over here, how comedic."

"Shut up," he said.

"I thought it was Keith's job to be the silent and mysterious one," she continued. She turned to Hunk for approval as she laughed, but he gently shook his head, biting his lip.

"I said-" Lance slammed his palms on the counter abruptly, pushing his chair back emphatically with a screech "-shuddup!"

There was an apposite moment where they stood in their places, stiff, flustered. Lance stood there, palms pressed into the counter; Pidge staring at him with wide-eyed, and Hunk, who couldn't bear to look at either of them. And when Lance pulled his chair back to the counter, there was silence; it was a weary, disturbing lack of nose, of laughter and talking.

"Sorry," Pidge murmured.

"Forget about it," Lance said.

Pidge was wrong about Shiro. As a matter of fact, he had no idea where Allura was, and if he did, he wouldn't be looking for her anyways. He was rather preoccupied at the moment, and he had a lot of questions. When he entered the kitchen, he could tell that the rest of his crew did too.

"We need to talk, all of you," Shiro said, firmly. He had regained his steadiness, and the bark of agitation which had appeared so suddenly had just as quickly disappeared. "Let's start with you Pidge."

"Oh, c'mon!" She threw her hands in the air with contempt. They promptly returned to her side as he approached the counter.

The tone he used to convey the seriousness of all of their actions was intimidating by it's own right; but the disappointment that interlaced his words, without the intention, melted any resolve left to voice a challenge. "We are paladins- diplomats -but not children. That kind of inappropriate language will not be used by you, or anyone on this team, for that matter. And that applies to all languages, Lance." He chided Lance with his scrutiny, but he had already looked away, feigning interest in the loose stitching of his jacket.

"Are you listening Lance?"

"Yes," Lance answered.

"I'm glad to hear that. So next time, when I give an order, follow it. I don't know what happened back there, but that's not up for discussion. Keep yourself in check Lance. I told you to stop, then and there, for a reason." Shiro's voice was growing louder.

"I don't understand," Lance said. He was so quiet, Shiro almost didn't recognize the sound.

Shiro paused, then asked him, "What don't you understand?" His tone was sharp, apathetic.

"I don't remember ever hearing you telling u- me, telling me to stop." He was hesitating with each word.

"It was the gunshots Shiro," Pidge interjected. She glanced at Lance, then, thinking quickly, "None of us would have been able to hear you over that noise."

Shiro pressed the inside of his hand against his forehead, as if it hurt him to discuss this subject with them. "Listen, I know that I'm being tough on you guys, maybe too tough- but I can't stress the importance of the job that we're out here to do. And we can't do that job properly if we don't get our act together- if we don't work as a team or don't even work at all." Hunk shifted uncomfortably in his seat at that last part. "All of us are at fault here, and no one takes more blame than me. But Lance, I think you owe Keith an apology. I do too." Shiro paused, heaving a sigh. "Maybe it would be for the best if we stopped playing around so much, starting with the nail polish."

"What!" Pidge exclaimed. She was the first to stand up. "Do you know how unfair that it is!"

His glower withered her enthusiasm down to it's size; she closed her mouth immediately. And without another word, Shiro turned around and left. When the door closed behind him, Pidge pounded her fist into the countertop.

"The nerve of him!" She shouted. "Coward!"

"Pidge, calm down!" Hunk warned, uneasy with how everything had just unfolded. "Do you even know what you're saying?"

She appealed to Lance. "Doesn't that bother you?" Her hands were balled into fists, clenching the fabric of her shorts. She had no self-control left.

"He's right."

It was more of an insult to Lance than it was to any of them. It was a low blow, and it had cut right through him. He was not blind; he could not deny the flagrant favoritism that Shiro had attempted to defend, time and again. It was a subtle partiality that left Lance as less than a paladin because of it. What did that title mean to him now? He had tried, with the bare minimum of convenience that he was provided, to make himself work, to function like a paladin was supposed to function. To function like a teammate was supposed to function. He had tried, with all the self-assurance that was still left in him, to mean something to Shiro. And not just to Shiro, but to everyone. To make the word "paladin" mean something- not just to himself, but to anyone who heard the name Lance next to it.

"I'm not tough enough."

"Where the hell did that come from?" Pidge exclaimed, exacerbated. Hunk didn't have the heart to scold her for it. "For the love of quiznak, you're tougher than nails Lance!"

Lance walked out the door, with the darkest expression on his face.

"Listen to me!" Pide shouted, reaching for his arm. He glided past her without remorse. As the door closed behind him, she yelled at his back "That wasn't supposed to be funny!" She stomped her foot on the floor. "Why are you being silent?" It was directed at Hunk. "Why aren't you saying anything?"

"I-"

"Sometimes you guys just throw a tantrum, you just brood! Just like my brother, without a thought for anyone else!" Pidge dashed into the hallway. "Wait up Lance!"

Coran was setting Keith's nose in place with his bare hands.

"Now, if you're going to scream, please do so after my face has been moved a significant distance from yours, yes?"

It was the most unpleasant diagnosis he had ever been given by an (assumedly) certified medical professional, to date. Even if Coran was certified, the cheap paper degree that would have hung formally in his office in a clean, expensive frame would have expired ten millennia ago, at the least. The only kind of tangible, visible guarantee Keith was left with at this point was the gaudy writing etched into his nails: "GREAT CORAN". Oh, the irony; it was as poignant as a gunshot to the chest. Yet the dull throb in his body, pinpointed at the epicenter- his shattered nose -was enough to convince him that Coran knew best. His mind began to stray as his doctor settled his hands into position, supported by the angles in his face- did his medical insurance still cover bodily damages in the deepest depths of outer space?

There was a nauseating snap as Coran, with both of his hands, yanked the practically detached cartilage as far to the left as physically possible. Keith blinked, and it was over, a short instant of material relief. Coran's head had barely lifted from Keith's face when he screamed. He had timed it: two-point-three ticks.

"Good, good, that's a healthy average for most patients!" Coran assured him.

Keith stared at the ceiling, blank and grey and meaningless. The longer he looked, the more aware he become of the tension in his body. He was clenching the bedding as if his life depended on it, a tiny patch of synthetic cotton. Did they even have cotton on Altea? How could they not, he wondered. It was a staple crop, a necessity for man and his survival. Yet its importance had not occurred to the Alteans as significant. What perception was real anymore then, it dawned on him. Was the bedding? Was the ceiling? Was the gun wound? It wasn't even a bullet that struck him, right there, in the dead center of his chest, like a bullseye; but the munition, it had disappeared before his body could even identify that he had taken a shot. It left an ache in his chest, but it wouldn't leave a pockmark to authenticate the pain. How cruel was that.

Coran was hustling around the room like it was the ER. He was picking this tool up, then throwing it away; he was writing this down, then moving that closer to here; he was opening more bottles than he was closing. His hands, however, were moving faster than his feet- he had concocted a compound paste from two extracts, which had combined to make an awful shade of purple, and he slathered it over Keith's nose before he could realize what had been applied. The skin absorbed the paste eagerly, and the epidermis was dry by the time Coran fastened a rigidly structured band aid on the bone. It hugged tight to the cartilage, keeping it in place.

"I've applied an organic extract of two very special plant byproducts to your face that will keep any swelling or irritation of the skin from the bone at a minimum. The brace I've attached to your nose will keep the cartilage from shifting as it heals," he explained.

"Thank you," Keith said. He slowly shifted himself into an upward position. To him, at least, it would appear more seemly, despite the obvious discomfort it was.

"Are you alright?" Coran asked, gathering up his materials. "You seem a tad bit slower today than usual."

"I'm fine," Keith said. He closed each eye, one after the other, trying to get a better examination of the sleek contraption on his nose; it resembled in design a breathing correction strip for colds.

"It wouldn't appear that way, young man," Coran said. He then added, "It's not really any of my business, but I would advise that you go talk to Lance. A good chat with a friend can sometimes be much better for your health than an external nasal dilator strip." Without so much as a glance, he sifted his medication bottles into their corresponding drawers.

"Is that what these things are called?" Keith asked, poking at the brace.

Coran chuckled, then took a seat at the foot of his bed, shaking his head softly, as if to laugh at the naivete of the youth he was surrounded by. "I don't believe you're listening to me."

"Sorry Coran, I'm just a little tired." And Keith wasn't lying. He hadn't slept for more than thirty minutes at best in the past ninety-six hours. The fact that he was still awake, with a heart beat and stable lungs and all, was a surprise to him.

"A lot on your mind, eh?" Coran was being sympathetic, and Keith appreciated the sentiment, but even he didn't know what he was feeling.

The door to the medbay slid open with a hiss. Shiro walked in, composed yet with visible symptoms of fatigue showing through, as if he was finally able to relax in their presence. Coran stood up from the bed, nodded to Shiro, and took his leave. As he left, he shot Keith a cheeky wink of encouragement- for what, Keith didn't know. As the door closed, he watched as Shiro heaved himself onto the edge of the tiny mattress, near the foot of the bed where he had now replaced Coran. Something about his presence left an uneasiness with him, a knot in his stomach he didn't know was there until Shiro sat down next to him.

He patted Keith's shin earnestly, like what a brother visiting a hospital might do. "How are you doing? You feeling alright?"

Keith avoided the question entirely. "Shiro, am I going to get in trouble for this?"

There was a moment of silence. It seemed to Shiro like all he did was hesitate, in the fear of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. He sighed, heavily; as if he was about to let a great weight fall off his shoulders, if just for a fleeting moment. "Unfortunately, that's what I have to tell you. Everyone's in trouble, including myself."

"This is my fault Shiro."

If he was always too careful, than Keith was always too blunt. There was no trepidation in his statement, and the certainty in which he made it only affirmed his temerity, but also his crippling self-reliance, a crutch to fall on when he was blinded by his impression of reality.

"And why would you say that?" Shiro asked.

Keith finally had to stop to think- Shiro was forcing him to. He shook his head.

"You say it like it's easy to just put out there, but it's not so easy to defend, is it? Keith, you have the potential to become a leader someday. If you want to bec-"

There was one lie and one truth hidden in his words, and if Shiro had asked him to point out either, he would have done so without a single shred of reluctance.

"I don't want to be a leader." Keith was pulling at the bedspread again, and Shiro wouldn't meet his eyes. "I said," and he repeated himself, voice low and steady, "I don't want to be a leader."

"I heard you," Shiro said.

"No, you didn't!" Keith exclaimed. His voice was rising. "If you're so caught up in your own plans for finding the next leader of Voltron, then go do it somewhere else. I want nothing to do with it. Have you ever considered that maybe I don't want to be a part of this either?"

Shiro was wincing at the harshness of his voice. But Keith wasn't finished.

"Go ask Lance," he said.


	6. We Need to Talk

Hunk was not a crybaby. But he cried anyway.

He wasn’t really crying, but there were tears in his eyes, the sting of what should have been sadness but was instead disillusionment. After Pidge had walked out on Hunk, leaving him in a distressed and fretful condition, he had lost her track (and the sound of her shouts) down the corridor, and so he decided it would be best to meet her midway and waited speechlessly at the door to her room. When she had returned, twenty minutes later, and unlocked her door, Hunk opened his mouth, but she quickly said 

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

And Hunk closed his mouth. 

Pidge did not invite him in, but instead left the door open for him. So when he stood in place, still, waiting for the appropriate invitation, she stopped, halfway across her room, before raising an eyebrow at him. He smiled sheepishly, teetering on the threshold to her territory.

“You don’t have to be so polite Hunk,” Pidge said. She nodded towards her side of the doorway. “Come on.”

“Sorry,” Hunk said. He was chewing the insides of his cheek.

It was a mess, really; it would be inaccurate to call it a room. The aluminum trash bin by the door was overflowing with empty casts of tinfoil for reheatable foodstuffs and rusted metal chunks of machinery. At the bare minimum, Pidge had a makeshift organization system: there was one pile for android components, one pile for data processing parts, and one pile for her personal usage (the wild card of the piles, she had deducted one evening). If girls were supposed to be neat, you would have considered Pidge the mythbuster of the species, a real rulebreaker. Was there even a bedspread on her mattress? It was a question no one could have answered, not even Pidge. In reality, she didn’t even sleep on her bed, nine out of ten nights. She crashed on the floor like real women did- sleep was for the men who assumed she was a clean fanatic.

“Watch your step,” Pidge warned Hunk. “If you break one of my circuit boards, you may or may not leave this room in one piece.”

Balancing on the tip of his toes, he gently nudged his way through stray electrical cords and metallic bolts with the pad of his foot, making a clearing for himself on the floor amid her three piles of- let’s face it Pidge -junk. She sank into her laundry pile- a mound of blankets and pillow cases and retired Altean army uniforms that she had purged from her closet. She was tiny compared to the pile, and it looked as if the mountain of fabric was going to swallow her whole. 

There was nothing she had nor wanted to say, and she seemed fine with it staying like that; opposed to Hunk, misinterpreting the silence between them to be an unfriendly and uncomfortable one. Pidge’s expression was tight; like she couldn’t focus her eyes on the world around her, like the different colored wires in her hand were blurring into one shade. Her face was contorted with tension.

And Hunk cried. 

Pidge’s head snapped up at the sound of his sniffle; he was trying too hard to keep in a real cry.

“There’s just so much-” he searched for the word “- so much platonic tension between everyone. It’s horrible.”

Pidge sighed, a small smile escaping her self-control. She dropped the machine in her hands and cracked the joints in her fingers, as she told him, a little unsure of how to handle the situation, “It’s not your fault.”

“I know that!” Hunk said, breathing out a small laugh, wiping at his eyes with the inside of his hand. “It just feels like - like, I don't know, like instead of having to bond with our lions, we have to bond with each other all over again.”

“Well, you’re not wrong there,” Pidge admitted. “I think that there’s just a lot we don’t know about each other. When you put it in perspective, we haven’t been out here that long. And, I don’t want to be the one to say it, but I think we’re going to be staying out here for longer than we think, and it looks like some of us are starting to realize that.” She shrugged her shoulders, picking at the exposed wires in her lap, unconsciously. “Don’t worry about Keith and Lance either. In the same way, they’re realizing that they’re going to have to finally put up with each other if they don’t want to die alone in the middle of space.”

“You’re pretty spot on Pidge,” Hunk said. “I can see that.”

She was frowning at her fingers, still playing with the thin red and blue wires, rolling them between her fingers as she lost her thought. Hunk was pointing in her direction, but she hadn't heard him.

“Huh?”

“Is that the nail thing Lance asked you for?”

“Oh, yeah.” And then, she did something unexpected: she flashed a devious grin at Hunk. “Pass me the screwdriver next to you.”

He searched his periphery for a moment, and when it’s green plastic handle had caught his eye, his face lit up. He reached to pick it up, then stopped cold, processing the context in which she had asked him for the screwdriver. “You’re not-”

“You bet your quiznak’s ass I am.”

Hunk was mortified, but he handed the screwdriver to her despite the uneasiness it left him.

In the half-hour he spent in Pidge’s room, they had practically finished the machine. Pidge strategically shifted from her laundry pile to the small nook in between her meal wrappers and an array of worn down tools (a gift from Coran), positioning herself in front of Hunk. Together, they untangled the color spectrum of wires and connected them to the circuit, they had attached the blue LED lights to the roof of the machine, and they had coded all existing commands needed for operation into the interface. Pidge did the majority of the hands-on work, while Hunk observed, a second pair of eyes to aid her hands when she was caught in a tight spot. The most stressful moment they experienced was when Hunk realized that they had put the LED lights in backwards, causing them to almost blow their filaments, when Pidge had thought it was a system malfunction. She had made the lights by hand, which, in retrospect, was probably not the best idea, but she wanted to avoid asking Coran for supplies at all costs- on every occasion that she had asked Coran for a certain part or tool, he either brought her back the wrong thing, or just altogether ignored her request and attempted to convince her to use an awkward, foreign instrument from Altea or some other planet he thought was above her capability. Taking that route always ended with some kind of macro-level failure, or better yet, another all-nighter as she tried to fix the technical havoc he had indirectly wreaked. Thinking about it made her wonder how he fixed Keith’s nose, because she really didn’t believe that Keith would walk away from that experience with the same facial features as he did walking in.  
They were recounting the screws needed to finish installing the panels when the two shared a jolt of terror at the single soft knock at the door, neither Hunk nor Pidge knowing if the sound was real, or just another pile of junk scrap metal shifting in it’s place. They waited, shrouded by their silence; the muscles in Hunk’s neck were twitching from staring downwards for so long, and Pidge had a migraine from looking directly into the LED lights for the past half-hour. They thought they were going crazy, but a second series of louder knocks at the door grounded them in reality.

“Hey, Pidge?” 

“Lance!” the two shouted in unison, eyes wide. 

“We’re coming buddy!” Hunk called to the door, and he scrambled to get on his feet. Pidge didn’t even bother to remind him of the circuit boards.

“Wait up!” Pidge exclaimed, stumbling on a pair of ripping Altean breeches.

But as they both stood up, one after the other, the room began to spin on it’s axis. There was an audible crack as Hunk straightened his back, stretching his arms over his head with a harmony composed of a slew of unnatural noises varying in decibel level. There were spots in Pidge’s vision, floating from one corner to the next with an irritating glow, coming in and out of view as it bore into her eyes like the reflection of glare on your glasses.

“That is disgusting,” Pidge groaned, recoiling at another note of joints popping in Hunk’s lower back as he flexed backward.

“I think I’m starting to understand why Shiro exercises so much,” Hunk wheezed, jogging towards the door.

Pidge bolted past Hunk, barely avoiding a tumble to the floor as she slammed her hand into the door’s handpad, kicking every object in her way out of sight and out of mind. As the door slid open, she caught herself by leaning against the wall, narrowly dodging Hunk as he scurried next to her.

Lance didn’t wait for them to open their mouths.

He stepped into the doorframe and launched into his dialogue “I’m-”

Hunk pulled him into his chest. Lance whistled what he thought was his last breath as all the air was squeezed from his lungs. It was such an extensive use of force that he was dangling over the floor by mere inches. His ribcage was subsequently crushed by the exertion of pressure, but he forced a feeble smile anyways; it was the thought that really counted, and he would gladly let Hunk hug him if it meant becoming a new brand of pulp. But he knew, sticking somewhere in the back of his head like a thorn, that he really didn’t deserve that thought. When Hunk had released him, Lance stumbled to find his balance, even as Hunk kept a sturdy grip on his shoulders.

“Oh man, where have you-” Lance was wincing as a surge of pain radiated into his limbs and up his spine “-sorry, sorry! Where have you been? We were looking all over for you!”

Lance was staring at Hunk wide-eyed, shame so clearly expressed through the strain in his face, dull yet frank in it’s display. He was clinging his arm to the side of his body, rubbing his palm against the fabric of his sleeve as he had a tendency to do when he was afflicted with distress over another’s regard. 

“Is Pidge in there?” Lance asked. His words came out fast, with each syllable stressed, as if to accentuate the meaning.

“I’m right here,” she said, wedging herself between Hunk and the doorframe.

It was not so discernible to the eye, but in their presence Lance was edging a subtle, a terse distance between them. It was a visceral reaction, an impulse that he could not control with thoughts alone. He was letting his assumed perception of their sentiments towards him drip into the other pieces of his identity, and he couldn’t save face to hide it all from rising to the surface.

“I’m sorry that I just - just blew up on you guys like that, without even an explanation. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I-”  
“Lance, there’s nothing wrong with you,” Pidge exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. Lance opened his mouth to reply, but she beat him to it. “I’ve said it before, right? And I’ll say it again- but I’m not going to, since no one ever listens to what Pidge has to say. You tell him!” And she said it with a huff, falling back on the doorframe with arms crossed.

Hunk gently shook Lance at the shoulders, and said “Bud. Listen to Pidge. There’s nothing wrong with you. But clearly there’s something wrong with whatever that’s bothering you. That doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you.”

“Thank you Hunk. Now get your ass in here and tell us what’s up,” and Pidge narrowed her eyes, adding “And that’s an order!”

Pidge finished screwing on the panels while Lance spoke, multitasking. As Lance took a seat on the floor, there was a visible cringe as an empty rations wrapper squeaked under his foot; he forced his body to fit into what little space was available, cramming his knees to his chest, so as not to disturb the room with his presence. He despised clutter- it was his archnemesis, but on this front, he could not meet the disorder for battle, it was not his fight. On the other hand Pidge had assimilated herself into the chaos, and she had befriended it; a little bit of untidiness was a little bit of home, in her eyes. He wasn’t even sure he was in a room anymore, let alone a homely abode, but his initial discomfort began to lessen as he spoke. 

“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Lance quipped under his breath, but the two of them laughed anyways.

When everyone seemed settled, Hunk jumped straight into what was on everyone’s mind. “So what’s bothering you? Besides the mess.” When Lance shifted his gaze to the floor, Hunk added, “I mean, we’re not going to force you to talk, you know, if you’re not ready.”

“I am,” Pidge interjected, glancing up from the screwdriver and shooting a glare at Lance.

And then, Lance did something amazing: he laughed. “You’re kidding, right?” It was a real, wholesome sound, and at it’s tone both Pidge and Hunk were able to relax the tense uncertainty they found themselves giving into.

“Huh?”

“I’m literally sitting on bicycle grease right now, because you wanted me too, and now you tell me that I don’t have to talk.” Lance was shaking his head, but there was a faint smile on his lips. 

Hunk let out a deep breath, leaning his weight on his left arm as he spoke. “Well of course we want you to talk to us, we’re worried about how you’re worried about something that we don’t know about. But you’ve got to respect boundaries, you’ve got to take it slow, one step at a time. It’s a process, you know?” 

Lance raised an eyebrow at him. “So like, a therapy session?” Pidge snorted. “This is a therapy session now? What, are you going to pull out those little cards with the weird shapes on ‘em and ask me to talk about my feelings towards human mortality?”

“Do you want to do that?” Hunk asked.

“No,” Lance said flatly.

“Then no.” Hunk was smiling, and Lance, unsure of how to respond to this, turned to Pidge, but she shrugged at him, as if to tell him in her smart attitude “well, what are you going to do now?”

“Well, then where do I start?” Lance asked, to no one in particular. His arms were wrapped around his shins, pressing his knees to his chin a little tighter. He was tapping his index finger against the adjacent wrist, with no rhyme or rhythm other than the satisfaction of movement.

“Anywhere,” Hunk answered, with Pidge adding, “Start with a question.”

The two boys gave her a skeptical look, but she shrugged it off, saying “What? Maybe he needs to get us talking before he can be ready to talk for himself.”

Lance bit his lip. He stopped bouncing his finger. As he chewed on his bottom lip, he tried to find the right sequence of words to use, but he had no lucky break, and nothing seemed to sit conveniently in his throat. It was like cracking a code without knowing the first three numbers, or writing a book from the middle to the beginning: it didn't make sense, even to him.

“Am I tough?” Lance asked, with an even voice, steadily.

“Yes!” Hunk and Pidge shouted, almost simultaneously, and so loudly that they could not hear the knock at the door. Lance was almost blown backwards by the force of their answer.

Pidge was pulling at the roots of her hair. “Why the hell would you think otherwise!” she exclaimed. There was another knock, but she spoke over it’s low noise, shouting “You literally just kicked Keith’s ass what, three hours ago?”

Whoever was at the door went to knock again, but he stopped himself, unfurling his fingers from the tightly curled fist he had raised, hovering over the metal hesitantly.

“I don’t know what to tell you man, there’s like a thousand pieces of evidence to back up that statement!” Hunk exclaimed. “Why would you think that you?”

Lance was taken aback by the persistence of their response. He was floored, and whatever muster of resolve he had found in himself to speak up before, he had lost now.   
“Well, I-”

“Is it because of Shiro?” Pidge asked, and a dark expression fell across her face.

Lance paused, then answered “Kind of.”

Pidge was getting herself worked up. The moment it fell out of his mouth he knew it was the wrong reply. The screwdriver almost snapped in her grasp.

“Wait, hold on!” he exclaimed, holding his hands up, an attempt to quell her anger. He rearranged his bearings, crossing his legs against the floor, as Pidge settled back into the curve of her laundry pile, her lower jaw rigid.

The person at the door pressed the side of his face against the cold surface, straining to catch the familiar pitch of a voice or any murmur of disquiet to indicate the proximity of life inside the walls. And he did catch it- a loud tone, with a resonant quality to the pitch, the inflection that indented each syllable so expressive that there was a new rhythm to the speech every time a sentence ended and began, falling and rising, or rising and falling, which every way the throat pleased. In his head, he tried to picture the way the face would change to reflect the sound of the voice, the adjustment of the corner of a lip or the bend of an eyebrow. But for some reason beyond his sense, he kept picturing blue nails- the voice sounded as if they would wear blue nail polish.

Lance took a deep breath. 

“It wasn’t just Shiro, it was - it was myself. I psyched myself out. But am I going to agree that he’s wrong? I can’t. Because I know that if there’s one thing that he was right about it was me.” He was picking at the fabric of his pants, finding it hard to meet either of them in the eye. But he continued. “I’m not strong, or smart, or talented. I’m not a born leader. I’m not a good soldier. I’m not the man that Shiro or Keith or Hunk or even Coran can be. And maybe it’s because I’m not manly enough or because I’m not tough enough, I don’t know. But I’m trying to find it in myself to be that last important member of the team, you know? And it’s just not working. I want to work, I want to do something for all of you. I would do anything for you guys-”

“Even Keith?” Pidge asked. 

“Especially Keith!” Lance exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air out of desperation. “All of us want something for being out here, all of us are searching for something right? Pidge, you’re out here looking day and night for your family, and Hunk, you’re here to make your family proud. But I’ve always wanted to be here, I’ve always wanted to be doing the stuff we’re doing now. And for some reason, I’m messing it all up and ruining my chance. I’m not here for anybody other than myself, and somehow I still can’t become the kind of man I always wanted to be. I’m just a stupid pretty boy.” 

Hunk started crying again. Lance was pressing his palm against his temple, gritting his teeth, as if it pained him to utter every word that came out of his mouth. And when Pidge looked back down at the machine in her lap, panels fully screwed in place, she saw the teardrops that were building up in little heaps on the bright white plastic. She was crying too.

“Take it!” Pidge said it. 

Lance looked up at her. 

“Is that-?”

“I said take it! If you’re a man you’ll take it,” and she shoved the box into his arms. He stared at it, speechless, unclear of what he was supposed to do with it. “Biologically, a man is a fully grown male member of the species homo sapien. Coran isn’t a man, he’s a male Altean adult. And you and Hunk and Keith aren’t men either, because last time I checked none of you are eighteen years old yet. The only grown-ass man on this ship is Takashi Shirogane, for your information.” Pidge stood up, arms crossed and said “It doesn’t matter if you paint your nails or lift weights for a living, none of that is a requirement for being a man. Are you a homo sapien?”

Lance gaped back at her. She raised her eyebrows at him, waiting for him to respond.   
“Uh, yes?”  
“Are you a male?”  
“Yes.”  
“And are you an eighteen year old or older citizen of the United States of America, with inclusion of dual citizenship?”  
“No?”

“Then sorry, you’re not a man, but you’re definitely a tough teenage boy who’s an amazing sharpshooter and does great nails.” Pidge heaved a sigh, as if all the talking had left her breathless. “Did I miss anything Hunk?”

“You’re really good at chemistry,” he beamed through his tears. “You forgot that part. And I really like the way you did my nails. No Tan Lines orange is just such a good color for me, and I’m so glad you made it for me man.”

Lance was laughing now, and it was a contagious sound, the kind of loud senselessness people were happy to catch. Pidge nudged him with a cheeky push, and he stood up and grabbed her by the waist, pulling her into the air and off her feet, both of them cracking up at his horrible attempt to scare her. Hunk was grinning at them, wiping at the tears still left in his eyes. When he had dropped Pidge back to her feet, Hunk grabbed Lance by the shoulder, disheveling his hair with his knuckles, roughing him up out of good humor. 

“Don’t forget to take this with you,” Pidge said, handing him the nail dryer. 

“Thanks Pidge. You too Hunk. For everything,” and he took the machine off her hands. He turned the machine over in his hands, examining its design and feeling it’s weight, before telling them “I gotta go find Keith.”

He stepped back from the door, removing himself from the metal. His fingers lingered, hesitant, his pulse racing as he was compelled to race to a decision- leave to save his pride or face the voices behind the door. Keith turned on his heel, gaze still held on the door, as if to hold out for an intervention of coincidence, and then abandoning it all right there at the threshold of the room, as he bounded down the corridor. 

He couldn’t hear the door as it opened, but he could hear the footsteps that came from it’s open frame. He slowed himself to a walk, feigning a nonchalance he knew he didn’t have. He slipped around the corner, restraining his eyes from wandering too far over his shoulder, but his instincts failed him.

“Keith, hey!” 

He stopped, cold. There was a prick at the base of his neck, like ice, and he didn’t know what the sensation was. Trepidation? Fear? He turned around, despite the scream of every nerve in his body, pleading him not to.

“Hey,” Lance said, leaning on the wall, a slight pant underlying his breath. “I uh, thought we could talk?” He smiled at him, a bit weak, but it did nothing to melt the frigid glower on his face.

“Spit it out.”

“I wanted to apologize, for today and yesterday and - and basically this entire week. This whole nail polish thing, it got out of hand and it never should’ve started anyway.” But Keith wasn’t really paying attention to what he had to say, he was listening to his voice, the rhythm of it. He was focusing on the sound, peering at the out-of-place box under his arm out of the corner of his eye, as he tried to find the cadence and match it to the blue nail polish he had pictured on the other side of the door. “Keith?”

“Yeah,” he said, still not giving Lance his full attention. “Why are you sorry?”

And then he realized something: he was doing exactly what Shiro had done to him. He was backing Lance into a corner, knowing full well that that there was nowhere for him to go. The nail polish, he had heard him say that at least- and Keith knew what the general answer of “why” should have been, if that’s what this was about. Keith was putting Lance on defense, because he hadn’t predicted that they’d get this far in their conversation, or even get there at all. And there was a twinge of guilt in his chest for it, for subconsciously being a counterfeit of that high-handed yet detached persona Shiro had created. But Lance was always surprising him.

“Because it was stupid. It was immature and inappropriate and I-”

“You’re wrong.” Lance stared at him, unexpectedly curious to see where this was going. “It wasn’t stupid.”

Lance paused, letting his arm fall from the wall. “I shot you in the chest three hours ago because you didn’t want to wear nail polish, and you’re telling me, right here, that that wasn’t stupid?”

“Shiro was the one put you up to it. He threatened me. You did what you had to do and I did what I had to do.”

Lance raised an eyebrow at him. “Touche.” Keith didn’t know what that meant. “Well, I’m still sorry about it. If you really want to take a long look at it all, I’m the one who started it, so there. It’s my fault. Apology accepted?” 

Lance held out his hand. Keith stared at it, his hand fixed to his side. His fingertips were numb, the tensity of agitation pulsing through his wrist to his skin.

“What happened to your nails?” Keith asked, taking Lance’s hand into his own, his palm held in Keith’s fingertips. Lance’s fingers brushed against his wrist, skin slightly flushed near their tips. 

“Oh, you mean the nail polish? I rubbed it off,” Lance said. He was distracted, flustered by the way in which Keith had so adamantly taken his hand.

“It was fine before.” Keith met Lance’s eyes. “Why did you get rid of it?”

Lance’s mind was a blank slate. Either Keith was so confident in what he was doing that his composure was natural, or he was just plain oblivious to how conversations were normally carried it out.

“I thought you would like it better,” Lance muttered.

“But you’re obviously not happy with it. It looked pretty before,” Keith said.

Lance pulled his hand back, glancing at his nails, glancing at anything to avert his eyes from staring at Keith. 

“I thought you didn’t like pretty boys,” Lance spat. 

He didn’t realize he had said it until he heard it for himself. There was a scowl plastered onto his face, but Lance was was more disgusted with himself than he was with Keith. Disgusted that he would let himself be deceived like this, disgusted that he would let Keith of all people get to him. Keith narrowed his eyes at him, unconvinced by his anger.

“That’s a compliment, idiot,” Keith exclaimed. His hands were curled into fists, but they were still there, where Lance had left them. “I’m trying to be nice to you! I’m trying to apologize!”

But above all, Lance was disgusted that he ever thought Keith would look nice in papaya whip nail polish.


	7. Put Your Hands Up

Keith knocked on the door to Lance’s room five times before the stroke of midnight. Lance didn’t hear a knock- he heard somebody pounding their fist into metal, which didn’t budge.

He wasn’t asleep, but he wasn’t awake either. When Keith had knocked at his door, he had been sitting in his bed, upright, legs crossed as he stared out the plexiglass window and into the duplicitous twilight that was space, his back wedged awkwardly into the corner between his cot and the wall. His first thought was that Keith had decided to punch that wall, which they shared at such an inopportune time. And the next thought that followed was an alarming one, and it was that Keith had somehow heard him from the next room over and decided that if he couldn’t sleep, Lance couldn’t either.

He didn’t consider his options; he would stay put, right where he was, no matter how many dents he left in the wall. If Keith wanted to have a hissy fit, that was his entitlement, but it didn’t mean that Lance had to sit in and observe.

“Lance, it’s Keith. Can you come to the door,” Keith called out in a low but audible voice. It wasn’t a request, but more or less a statement to impel.

It was the type of restlessness that Lance was experiencing where his head was a tangle of sounds and phrases that mixed together with no context or logic, and no real definitive origin for them appearing in a comprehensible and unlikely sequence. And it was in this stupor that Lance got up from his corner between his cot and their wall. He pressed his hand and extended fingers, still rubbed clean of the blue nail polish stashed under his bed, onto the door’s handpad censor. It opened with a hiss, and before Keith could make any quick moves to enter, Lance leaned into the doorframe, arms crossed, and asked “What do you want, pretty boy?”

“Really?” Keith grumbled. He rubbed his eye, muttering “I wanted to say I was sorry- am sorry.” And before Lance could ask for what, he added “It was wrong of me to call you a stupid pretty boy.”

Lance grinned at him, and Keith couldn’t find a trace of mockery or malice on his lips. “Even though you’re kind of right?”

“Even though I’m kind of right,” Keith huffed, giving in. “About the stupid part.”

“And the pretty part.”

“And the pretty part,” Keith repeated back to him, pouting a bit at this. Keeping it to himself though, he found it a little funny.

They were both half-asleep and sedated by the darkness that filled their rooms and their windows, but it worked to their advantage- no one was there to watch them talk, to pressure them into acting a certain a way or saying certain things to each other that they were starting to realize they didn’t mean.

Lance was pushing himself out of the doorframe, about to say goodnight and shut the door on his stupid pretty face, when Keith said, rather abruptly and out of the blue,

“Can I come in?” He was pointing at the general area that was known to be the semi-permanent personal residence of Lance Álvarez McClain (until given further notice), with the most serious expression he had ever seen on his face.

“What?” Lance asked, summarizing all of the very long and explicit questions flying in his head into one concise word.

“Shiro said that if I lost I had to get my nails done, and I lost. So can I come in?”

“Woah, woah, alright, hold your robotic lions! First off, we had a nice little chat at least four hours ago about this. No. We’re not doing that. Secondly, you could have just said that you wanted your nails done instead of wording it so - so weirdly.”

“Fine!” Keith hissed, crossing his arms out of the bitterness in his attitude. “Can you do my nails for me, Lance?”

Lance, once again, did not consider his options, and leaving him and Keith together alone meant leaving both alone with no existing impulse control to supervise them. “And why should I do that, huh?” he asked, raising a brusque eyebrow at the boy in front of his bedroom door at eleven-fifty-one in the night.

“Because I want my nails done! Stupid, why else do you think I would ask?” And he punched Lance in the arm, a bit of a cheeky move.

“I don’t know!” Lance half-shouted, half-whispered at him, cradling his arm. “For someone who’s brutally honest, you really are hard to understand.”

“Oh shut up and move over,” Keith shouted back in the same tone.

Lance let him squeeze through, complaining, loud enough for Keith to hear, “Mohon, I think you left a bruise.”

“What, so you’re calling me tough now?” Keith said with a smirk, the door closing behind them.

“I’m calling you a piece of shit, Keith.” He was shaking his head, but he couldn’t hold back the smile on his lips. “You really need to work on your translating skills, mi amigo. Did you catch that at least?” Lance teased.

“Oh yes, very funny. So smart, this one,” Keith said sarcastically, finding a seat on the floor.

“I’m so glad we can come to an agreement,” Lance quipped back. He was kneeling in front of his cot, and like the other dormitory rooms, his was built into the wall. His hands were searching for the concealed drawer, but his drowsiness was blurrying his vision, and it took him a moment to finally locate it. When it popped open, he let out a small “a-ha!”, and he sifted through it’s contents, which let out small tinkling noises, like glass was hitting glass.

He pulled out a handful of clear bottles, overflowing in his palm, varying in colors from thick reds to translucent liquids. He let them roll onto the floor in front of Keith, who peered at them suspiciously as Lance returned to his drawer and hauled a squarish machine with a rectangular opening out next. He let it fall to the floor too, and then turned to Keith with narrowed eyes and a warning:

“Don’t touch anything unless I tell you to.”

Keith was too tired to respond. He watched, bleary-eyed, as Lance turned the machine onto its stomach and studied it’s different buttons, before finding himself satisfied with their condition.

“Hurry up,” Keith muttered. He was nagging, but the expression of his voice made him sound childish, too innocent for the character he was.

“If you wanted to have your nails done, then why did you wait ‘til midnight to ask?” Lance grumbled.

“What’s all that?” Keith asked, pointing at the manicure kit Lance had set on the floor next to the nail dryer with a skeptical sense of fear at the strangely shaped tools, which seemed very similar in their sharpness to contraptions of torture.

“What’s your face, Keith Kogane, that’s the real question,” Lance quickly replied, and in finally processing what he said, he snorted. Keith was choking, trying to hold back a grin, and they both cracked up at the stupidity of it, laughing together, for the first time, instead of at each other's throats. “I really need to sleep,” he breathed through the hilarity.

“That makes two of us,” Keith chuckled.

And an agreeable silence filled the air as Lance took both his hands and held him in his own, trying not to smile. Keith let himself smile, looking on as Lance examined his nails.

“Can you see in here? It’s so dark,” Keith whispered.

“Yeah, there’s a little bit of light from the window,” Lance whispered back. “Can you take off your gloves?”

Keith paused.

“My gloves?”

“Yeah.” Lance couldn’t believe he was still wearing them, and he wondered if Keith slept in them, though his disbelief got the best of him. That was such a silly thing to do, he convinced himself, and even Keith wasn’t that stupid. Right?

“OK,” Keith whispered back. His voice was even, but even lower than before.

He was stalling, and it was subtle, but noticeable to Lance. He slowly let his fingers fall from Lance’s hands, that didn’t move, didn’t flinch as he let go. His fingers were trembling, but Lance couldn’t see it in the dark, and they began to shake as he tugged at the black fabric, slipping them off. He took the right off, then the left, letting them drop into his lap. When they had been fully removed, Keith let his hands hover there, over his lap, and he stared at his palms, a cold sweat breaking out on his skin.

“Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Let me see your hands.”

And he let Lance take his hands and pull them towards his face, close, almost too close, to his mouth. The window, which Keith’s blurry eyes had fallen on, was gradually moving to the left, just as the castle was moving to the left; the distant stars outside the plexiglass frame gave the room a dull glowed, a muted bluish color that spread out in blurs across the walls and the floor and the bedsheets and Keith’s hands. Keith’s horrible, ugly hands.

“Carajo,” Lance cursed under his breath.

The skin on the top of his hands was calloused and uneven, rugged, with mismatched lines drawn across his bones from the likes of old cuts and hard patches of scar tissue near his wrists and his knuckles from who knows what. His palms however, were open wounds; there were blisters between his thumbs and his fingers on both hands and thin, wide scabs in between the depressed lines of his flesh. Scattered on his fingers and over his joints were other scars, some pale and etched into place, others with bumps that emerged at the surface.

Lance didn’t say anything about it. All he said was “Come here.”

He lead Keith to the bathroom, never letting go of his hand the entire way. He gently placed his hands in the sink, and let the cool water trickle over his fingers. While he let the water run, Lance combed through his different shelves, moving and grabbing his things as he went. After a few minutes, he turned off the water and lead Keith to a seat in his shower, before carrying back to him an armful of medical supplies, bottles, and bandages. Lance did his work in silence, and Keith let it stay that way. His fingers were gentle, always too gentle to avoid irritating the tenderness of Keith’s skin. When Lance applied an ointment to an open blister, he paced himself; when he was covering the deep cuts, he was delicate with the pressure.

Keith didn’t know when he had finished, but Lance had sat there for a moment in the shower, kneeling in front of him, his hand held in his, gazing sadly at the white bandages and lumps of gauze on his skin, thinking to himself that he never wanted it to be like this. He would have done anything to go back and ensure that none of it would have happened, that Keith’s hands wouldn’t be covered in scars and blisters and callouses that night but instead nail polish.


	8. Evening Reading

It was midnight when Shiro found Allura, hiding behind the ship’s manual console on the control deck, with a book in her hand.

Her fingers, nails polished with a lavender tint, followed the Altean script down the page and up again, tracing the strange script in shapes foreign to Shiro’s eyes. Her hair was twirled into thick, sloppy knots, creating a halo of frizz around her head. The white nightgown she wore brushed against her feet when she tucked her legs to her chest, with the book spread across her knees as she strained her eyes to see through the darkness that shrouded the yellowed pages.

“Princess?”

Allura’s hands tensed, and the book fell to the floor with a thud that recoiled like a gunshot in the vacated room. She shut her eyes, knowing that she could not face Shiro like this, to look him in the eye, not without a prick of humiliation.

“Princess!”

He was leaning over the console, peering down at her. There was a sympathetic smile on his lips, and his arms were slightly shaking from the effort it took to avoid all the buttons and handles on the monitor. It was bad enough that Coran was already awake, but there was no reason to wake up the entire ship with his carelessness. He had reported to Shiro that he had not seen the princess since dinner that evening, and so he sent him to seek her out, ignorant to the idea that maybe, just maybe, Shiro was the wrong paladin to ask.

Allura snapped her chin up- a grave mistake -and her head struck his forehead with an audible thump. The brunt of the blow threw Shiro’s head backward with a grunt, and his hands went immediately to the bruise, searching for blood that wasn’t there. Allura winced at the acute throb, holding her head in her arms as the pain slowly faded.

“Sorry about that!” He whispered profusely.

Shiro shuffled around the console and took a seat next to Allura, crossing his legs at the ankle rather casually. When the princess did not react to his presence, he breathed a sigh and picked up her book, flipping through the pages and watching them flutter in his fingertips. He couldn’t understand a single word- if that’s what they were even called in Altean.

“Does it still hurt?” He asked, the guilt in his voice unmistakable.

Allura ran her fingers through her hair, and took a deep breath. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“Oh, here.” Shiro handed the book to her, and she took it, hugging it to her chest.

She didn’t look at him, but she could tell that he was glancing at her from the corner of his eyes, as if she could disappear any moment, without warning. She gazed ahead, watching the flurried clusters of starlight constantly, but gradually grow evermore closer to their view. There were varying hues of red, the coldest stars, and the brightest beams of blue, the hottest stars. And sometimes, if you were lucky, you could see their distinctive coronas blur into one another on the fringes of galaxies, creating a royal purple, that glimmered like paint on a backdrop of the deepest black known to life. It was better than what any hologram could fabricate or any photo could forge; the pages in a book, detailed with the flowering languages of neither English nor Spanish nor Altean, could capture the essence of its grandiosity, no matter the adjective or the simile. There were some things you just had to see for yourself- man couldn’t keep copying the stars and expect their heart to stay complacent with the imitation forever.

That’s what Shiro was thinking, as he caught a glance of Allura’s hand. And then, he went and caught her hand not with his eyes but with his grasp. She did not flinch. She did not respond. She did not distance herself from him. She let Shiro lock his fingers with hers, and she brushed her thumb against the cold, steel surface that was his hand. There were just some things you had to experience for yourself, Allura reminded herself, before you let the old pages of a book fool you.

“Princess, you need to sleep,” Shiro whispered. He lightly squeezed her hand.

“Shiro, please. Don’t call me princess, not like this. Not now.”

“Allura.”

She turned to face him. It was somehow different, when he addressed her by her real name. When her father had used her first name, it was validating. When Shiro had used her first name, it was an epiphany. It was as if he had taken her book, which she had read so diligently from beginning to end, and had shown her the first sentence, forcing her to see it an entirely new light. To reread the sentence with an entirely different meaning, even though they were the same words, the same letters she had always seen, for all her life. And it was scary, it frightened her down to the core. But it also thrilled her, this discovery, a new moment in time that only he and herself could feel, and soon, reminisce.

“You need to sleep,” he pleaded with her.

But Allura disregarded his plea.

“You know, when I was a child, I used to see all the other girls reading these books, these little picture books about princesses, they were quite fashionable back then, amongst our age group, and when they would see me they would tell me how lucky I was. And of course, I knew I was fortunate. But I was always so jealous of them, even though I belittled myself for it, but it was because they had something I did not, out of all of the luxuries I was afforded: they had choices. And in a way, they were right, that I was lucky, that I was born into the life I was born into, because by a happy coincidence I enjoyed participating in politics and royal duties and I enjoyed participating in my father’s government.”

She bit her lip, lowering her eyes to their hands, entwined, settled between them. As her chin fell, the locks of her hair tumbled over her shoulders, glistening like threads of silver in the starlight. But her eyes, they were too bright, and the shadow that was hiding her face could not the hide emotions in her eyes as she spoke.

“But I always wanted to be able to make that decision for myself, not because of a law or some extraordinary stroke of luck. I wanted to be a princess because I wanted to be a princess. Not even if the universe was convinced that I should be their leader would I lead unless it was something, in my heart, I knew I wanted to do. And I used to tell people, ‘please don’t address me as princess’. And now - now..”

There were tears building in her eyes, shimmering with the blue and the pink of her pupils. She lifted her gaze to Shiro, and he pressed his thumb to her cheek, wiping the tears away.

“And now there is nobody in the universe who wants to call me their princess. And I’ve been given a chance, this horrible chance to start all over again, but at such a sacrifice. I’m the last princess that Altea will ever have, and I don’t think I can be that princess. I want to lead, more than ever do I want to be the leader I was born to be. But now that I have been given this chance to make that choice, who will follow me? My people? They are gone! And even now, with only five to lead, I am failing!”

Shiro didn’t let go of her hand, as he pulled her into an embrace, and she softly cried into his shoulder. He had been blinded, short-sighted by his shallow notions of the people around him, that he hadn’t seen the full extensive nature of her capacity for leadership. And there was this drop in his stomach, a jab of guilt, with the solemn weight of knowing that it was not just cursory, but undeniably consequential. His hand, the hand that he had left, was entangled in her hair; he could feel the warmth of her skin, and his fingers trembled at the sensation. It was the first time in what he thought felt like a lifetime that he could feel like this, feel another person in his hand. Shiro didn’t know how much he missed that feeling until Allura had reminded him of it, had forced him to feel it. And a burning hatred he didn’t know was inside him began to emerge- a hatred for the steel arm he was forced to live with. What had once been an integral part of his life now became a despised sight.

Allura let out a laugh, a small, meek sound. Her head left his shoulder.

“Can you feel it?” When he said nothing, she smiled through the tears, and laughed again. “My hand is shaking.”

And she was right. He raised her hand in what little space there was between them, and saw her fingers were shaking in his cold, lifeless palm. He pressed his lips against her knuckles. Shiro would have given his life to let Allura hold his real hands, to feel the pulse of his heart when she was this close to his skin. She was weeping now, choking back a whimper.

“If we had met in a different time, a different place even, I know that I would think at first sight that you’re a princess. I’m sure of it Allura,” he told her. “I’ll never forget the sound of your name, but before all else, you’re my princess, and nothing will ever change that. I will always follow you, no matter the places and the planets you lead me to. I’ll be right behind you.”

She was a galaxy made of stars the color of lavender, and he would have given anything to be the black backdrop of space she collided with.


End file.
